The Green Knight
by thorfinn965
Summary: After Camlann, Percival saw Gwaine die. Or did he? More dead than alive, Gwaine is rescued by a mysterious Druid woman who helps him find a new place among the guardians-and legends-of Albion.
1. Prologue: Wandering the Borderlands

**Prologue – Wandering the Borderlands**

Pain. Searing, burning pain like his whole body was on fire. Pain lancing through his veins, burrowing into his brain, strangling his heart as if to make it burst... His world was all-consuming pain.

And then there was nothing. Nothing but oblivion, dark as midnight and deep as the sea. There was no pain, no anything, not even breath or heartbeat.

Perhaps he was dying.

Perhaps he was already dead.

There was no thought in the void though, so he could not ponder the dilemma he was now in, suspended between the world of the living and the world of the dead. His head fell forwards, his body sagged, but he was still held upright by the ropes that dug into his wrists, binding his arms to the trees and pulling him this way and that like some grotesque parody of a puppet.

A fox trotted by, unnoticed by the man trembling on the verge of death. It padded through the dusky shadows on silent paws and came to stop in front of the prone figure, cocking its head to one side in mild curiosity. Crimson fur stood out like a splash of blood against the vibrant green of the forest, shimmering softly in the fading light. It seemed like nothing unusual—just a plain, ordinary fox. And yet there was intelligence in its dark amber eyes, intelligence as vast and deep as any human's. The fox studied the limp man tied to the trees, almost as if it recognized him.

The man made not a sound, showed not a sign that he noticed the fox's presence.  
With a flick of its bottle-brush tail, the red fox whirled away and disappeared back into the woods. It slid under the bushes ringing the clearing, making no noise as it slipped off to wherever it is that the creatures of the forest go when they vanish from the ken of humans.

After the fox's departure, the copse was deathly silent. If the man still breathed, it was not loud enough to be audible. Sagging against his bonds with locks of shaggy hair falling in front of his closed eyes, he looked as if he would never move again until the ropes decayed and his body finally collapsed to the forest floor.

Mayhap his soul had already departed to wherever it is souls go when they no longer inhabit the body. Mayhap what the fox had seen was only the empty shell of what had once been a man.

And yet... There was something about the stillness with which he hung and the listlessness of his body that did not quite match those of someone already dead. His lips were parted ever so slightly, so that maybe the barest whisper of air found its way into his lungs. No sound of a heartbeat could be heard, but all the same his skin was not as pale as it should have been if his heart no longer pumped blood through his veins. He trembled on the border between life and death, dancing that delicate dance on the razor's edge as his soul wandered the shadowy borderlands.

For a long time he hung there alone. With the fox gone, not another animal entered the clearing, not even the ravens and other scavengers that loved to feed on the corpses of the dead. The ravens had other food today, a whole battlefield of the dead, a feast cooked for them by the ignorance and stupidity of men and women who saw fighting as the only answer to their differences.

And then, all of a sudden, it happened that there was another figure in the clearing. She stepped out of the trees so swiftly and so silently that it seemed as if she had materialized out of thin air. Her bare feet glided over the stubby grass as her dark green dress trailed behind her, though she did not seem to notice or mind that it was dragging on the forest floor and had accumulated a smattering of twigs and leaves. All her attention was fixed on the figure strung between two trees, the figure that hovered between life and death, whose soul was on the verge of flight.

The strange woman from the forest knelt and tipped up the head of the prone man with one graceful finger. With her other hand, she brushed back a lock of dark brown hair from his face and studied the high cheekbones and stubbly chin it revealed. Her fingers danced as she ran her nimble hands over his broken body, gently probing his ribs and feeling for a pulse in his neck. She rocked back on her heels and smiled to herself, seemingly satisfied with what she had found.

"Well then," she said to herself as she began to unweave the knots binding the man to the trees. "Sir Gwaine."


	2. Chapter 1: Back From the Brink

**Chapter One: Back From the Brink**

"It was here. He should be here." The man, a knight judging by his chainmail tunic and the red, mud-splattered cloak that hung from his shoulders, knelt on the forest floor. He ran his fingers through the dirt and grass, the hair on his muscular, tree-like arms standing on end as he surveyed the clearing. Two strands of rope fluttered from where they hung in the branches, the frayed ends clearly cut by a blade.

The knight buried his head in his hands and began to sob, great, shuddering sobs that wracked his whole body. Tears streamed down his face, trickling through his fingers and down his arms as they pooled at where his wrists met the thick leather bracers he wore. He sat down heavily on the ground and cried to himself, heedless of the two other knights in the clearing.

"Perce…" one curly-haired man in chainmail said, gently putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Percival. I'm sorry. We all are."

The third knight stood off to one side of the clearing, uncomfortably shifting from one foot to the other. He averted his eyes from the sight of his two companions and stared resolutely at the ground. He was young, barely fifteen years old. Too young to be a knight, too young to be wandering the forest looking for survivors of the great battle that had taken the life of the king and so many of his companions. But there was no one else to take up the swords deserted at Camlann. No one else to protect the dying kingdom.

"Percival," the curly-haired knight said again. "How long has it been since you left him?"

"A day," Percival choked out through his sobs. He glanced up at his companion, tears glistening on his face and sorrow brimming in his dark brown eyes. "Leon..."

"A day," Leon echoed. "Perce, anything could have happened. Crows, wolves, other scavengers... The woods are full of them after Camlann." He put a comforting hand on Percival's shoulder, but that didn't halt his companion's flood of tears.

"He was dead," Leon continued, the words coming thickly through a voice clogged with emotion and on the brink of tears himself. "He was dead, there was nothing you could do. It was a body, only—" But it wasn't only a body. It was the body of their best friend, the greatest knight of all, loyal unto death, who had given his life for them.

Percival growled, the sound rumbling out of his cavernous chest like the growl of a wolf. His hand traveled slowly towards the sword at his hip as his fingers closed in a death grip around the hilt.

"He will be avenged," Leon reassured his friend. "They will _all_ be avenged."

Percival struggled to his feet and bowed his head on respect to his fallen comrade. There was no body to bury, no body to burn on the funeral pyre, but by the gods his memory would never die. Percival would see to it that his friend was not forgotten.

"Gwaine..." Leon and Percival stood side by side over the patch of empty ground where their friend's body should have been and bowed their heads.

"When we get back to Camelot, we'll hold a proper funeral," Leon said through his tears. "The queen will bury him with full honors, even if we don't have the body. You were heroes, you two, going after Morgana alone. You didn't fail. Never, ever think that you did."

"Goodbye, Gwaine," Percival whispered.

The young knight, the one who to this point had merely stood and watched, led up their three horses. Slowly, Leon and Percival stumbled to their mounts, weary with grief. They hauled themselves into their saddles and turned their horses' heads towards the ruin of Camelot.

* * *

Deep in the forest, through woods so impenetrable and caverns so dark that it seemed as if the place was hidden by nature herself, there lay a valley. And in that valley there was no cabin, no cottage, no encampment, no visible dwelling of man. There were only the birch trees with their bark as white as snow swaying in the wind, the tall oaks standing silent sentinel, the gnarled old ashes as old as time itself, a peaceful smattering of fallen leaves on the ground, and a single pool ringed by great boulders of granite. In the air, there were the feelings of solitude and peace, but also of an ever-watchful presence.

This secret valley, this sacred haven, was guarded by an ancient power.

Few who wandered into the beguiling beauty of the valley were ever seen again, and of those who did return not a one did so unchanged. They whispered of the things they had seen, horrors and wonders both. There were trees that spoke with the voices of men, pools that did not freeze in the coldest of winters, animals with more intelligence than any human ever had. And above all, they whispered of a sorceress—never seen, never heard, but _there._

Into this valley trotted a fox. His fur was as red as the sunset and his amber eyes as bright as the moon, his tail was held out like a banner and he walked free of any fear. If there truly was a sorceress in the valley, she was no threat to him.

The fox came to a halt by a bed of bracken and cocked his head in curiosity. There was a man lying there, his chest as still as the waters of a lake on a windless day and his skin beginning to whiten with death's pallor. Cautiously, the fox took a step forwards and placed one inky black paw on the bracken where the figure lay.

"He's not dead, you know," a woman said, materializing out of nowhere. Or perhaps with the dense trees it was only hard to tell where it was she had come from. She was clad in a simple dress of hunter green, its ragged edges trailing at her ankles, and she carried a carved wooden bowl engraved with strange symbols. The aromas coming from the bowl made the fox sneeze.

The fox took a few wary paces back from the unconscious man and watched the woman work.

She took a spoonful of the liquid carried in the bowl and gently prized the man's mouth open. The greenish substance trickled down his throat, though a good portion of it dribbled out the corners of his mouth and pooled on his chainmail. There was the tiniest of motions in the man's throat as his reflexes told him to swallow.

The woman smiled and laid an elegant hand over his forehead. She closed her eyes and began to murmur in a strange tongue, her voice rising and falling in a soft, lilting cant.

"_Lácne se bodig, lácne se bréostcofa, lácne se gást._"

In a motion so small it might have been missed if the woman hadn't been specifically looking for it, the man stirred slightly, one of his fingers twitching a fraction of an inch.

She grimaced though, and once she had lifted her hand from his forehead she sagged back against one of the great oak trees and rested her head on its rough bark.

"He's hurt worse than it looks," she murmured, presumably to the fox since there was no one else besides him but the unconscious man in the valley. "She used a Nathair on him…" Her pale grey eyes narrowed in hatred and pure disgust. "_A Nathair._" She reached out with a trembling hand to brush back a lock of dark brown hair from the man's face. "Poor knight, what tortures you must have endured. And yet here you lie, alive. Always shadowed by the great ones you served, I have found you at last. A champion, a hero this world sorely needs."

The fox nudged the man in the side with his moist black nose and whimpered.

"He has three broken ribs," the woman in green said. "She must have knocked him out before she unleashed that vile serpent of hers on him. Morgana…" she hissed, clenching her hand into a fist. "I'd kill her myself if she wasn't already dead. She was a disgrace to the High Priestesses."

The woman laid two fingers on the man's neck, checking for the faintest sign of a pulse. Satisfied with what she felt, she fed him another dose of the green liquid and repeated her strange chant. Then she began to ease his chainmail tunic off over his head. She did it with such gentle care that it took her the better part of an hour to slide it off without jostling his injured body. During that time she paused four times to pour more of her tonic down his throat.

Finally she had the chainmail completely off, exposing his muscular torso but also the numerous lacerations and spreading purple bruises. She folded the chainmail and laid it next to his bed of bracken, then began to run her fingers over his chest, muttering to herself in that same strange tongue as she poked and prodded at his ribs and slowly began to put his body back together.

The bruises retreated like the tide flowing back to the sea and the lacerations faded back into scars, but still the man slumbered on, unaware that he now lay bare-chested in the hidden valley of a sorceress, the blood-red cloak with its shining golden dragon device that had once marked him as a knight of Camelot lost forever somewhere in the forest's depths.

* * *

Days passed, each one the same. The woman in green tenderly dribbled her elixir down the man's throat and murmured ancient words over his body. He would stir just enough to make it clear that he was alive, the woman would smile, and then he would slip back into unconsciousness. But with each rising of a new, blood-red sun, he twitched a little bit more and a little bit longer. He began to mutter in his sleep, which now seemed a bit less like the ever-lasting one of death.

"Camelot…" he whispered, his eyes darting back and forth under their closed lids. "Camelot…"

Over and over again he repeated that one word as small spasms set his body trembling. Over and over again the woman in green knelt at his side and whispered strange words in his ear. Over and over again the fox left the clearing, only to return sleek and well-fed from hunting some time later.

And so it was that the days passed into weeks until one morning the woman woke from her restless sleep and addressed the fox.

"I had a dream last night," she said, glancing at the man on the bed of bracken. "He will awaken today, or he will never awaken again."

The fox merely yawned and trotted out of the clearing for his morning hunt, but the woman stayed by the man's side and studied his face intently. It had been almost a month since she had found him hanging half-dead from the trees in that far-away forest, and in that time the stubble on his chin had grown into full-fledged scruff. His dark brown hair was only as clean as she could make it by rinsing it with water from the pool, for she feared to move him lest it interrupt his healing.

But he would waken soon. He would waken in a strange place, with a strange guardian. What would he think of her? Would he be grateful that she had saved his life, or would he begrudge her for the magic coursing through her veins? The woman promised to herself then and there that she would tell him exactly who and what she was as soon as he awoke. Keeping secrets from him would only make it harder on both of them when they were eventually uncovered.

The sun began to sink below the horizon, bathing the tops of the trees in a soft golden hue. The fox had returned some time ago and was now curled up a few paces away from the man's bed of bracken. The whole valley was still, holding its breath and waiting.

Even the lady was motionless, staring intently at the man as if she could will his eyes to open. Strange, she had been nursing him back to health for a month yet she had never seen his eyes. She did not even know what color they were.

The man groaned and his face began to twitch. Slowly, ever so slowly, one of his eyelids peeked open and the other followed a fraction of a second behind.

His eyes were brown, dark and rich as loam with their lively spark of fire unquenched by his dance with death.

"Camelot…" he muttered once again, not quite seeming to realize where he was. "Must help… Arthur… Time… Morgana…"

The lady in green waited silently, kneeling at his side as he gradually blinked the delirium of four weeks of unconsciousness out of his eyes.

"Where am I?" he asked, snapping to attention as he felt the absence of a sword at his hip and glanced down at his bare chest and the forest floor around him. "What am I doing here?"

"Shh," the woman said, gently pushing him back down as he struggled to rise. "Easy. You've been knocked out for quite some time. You're only just beginning to recover."

"Where am I?" he asked again, flinching away from her touch. "Who are you?"

"This is the ancient stronghold of _Cumb Díegol_, the Hidden Valley." The woman gestured around at the colossal tree trunks, their upper reaches shining brightly in the setting sun, and at the calm forest pool off to her right, sweeping up her hand to encompass the ravined walls of sheer grey stone rising beyond the trees. "I am its guardian."

The man sunk back against the bracken and closed his eyes for a second. "I'm alive," he muttered, not seeming overly enthusiastic about the prospect. "I failed my king. Why am I still alive?"

The lady in green sighed with exasperation. She had no patience for self-pity. "You are alive because I kept you so. You are alive because Albion still needs you."

* * *

**Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read this! I've decided to use some Old English for spells, as they did in _Merlin_-however, I don't really know the language that well. I apologize for any spelling/grammar/word choice mistakes, and any corrections would be greatly appreciated!**


	3. Chapter 2: A Bit of Backstory

**2. A Bit of Backstory**

It was a few minutes before Gwaine spoke again. The woman almost thought that perhaps he had slipped back into unconsciousness, but his hand grasping for the sword no longer at his side belied that. She smiled faintly. Almost immediately looking for his sword—it was a good indication that she had indeed chosen the right knight.

"I don't know where your sword is," the lady in green said, speaking the truth whether or not the man believed her. "You didn't have it when I found you."

Gwaine's deep brown eyes flickered open again. "Found…me…?" he rasped.

The woman held a bowl of clear spring water to his lips and he gratefully swallowed some, coughing a bit when he took too much.

"I found you, Gwaine. Alone in the forest, dying of your wounds. I brought you here, to _Cumb Díegol_, to heal you." Once again, she gently placed her hand on the injured knight's arm. "I mean you no harm," she whispered.

"Who _are_ you?" Gwaine asked yet again, recoiling at her touch almost as if he was afraid of her.

She had sworn to herself that she would tell him as soon as he woke, and she was one to keep her word. If she wanted him to trust her, then she could not keep her identity a secret. "I—I am a High Priestess."

Immediately, Gwaine cringed away from her and began groping for a stick, a rock, _anything_ he could use as a weapon against her. His hand closed around something hard and wooden—a broken oak branch, no more than a foot in length and with a slightly sharp edge from where it had snapped off the tree. Not the most threatening of objects, but it would serve.

"Get away from me, _monster_," he hissed, brandishing the branch in front of him, his panic lending him strength.

The lady in green bowed her head and slowly turned away.

For a second, Gwaine faltered. He had expected her to turn on him, her eyes blazing amber with dreaded magic. He had expected to hear the echo of Morgana in her voice as she cursed him for all eternity. He hadn't expected her to actually do what he'd asked her to. Slowly, he lowered the stick and studied her with confusion written plainly across his face.

"Does magic make me a monster, then?" she whispered, her back still turned to him. The last rays of the setting sun reflected off her long, waist-length hair, turning it from dull auburn to burning bronze. The light sparkled in it, dancing through her hair and lending it the warm, steady glow of the sun. Morgana's hair had never done that. It had always been black as the blackest night, as if either it consumed the sunlight or the sunlight dared not touch it.

Gwaine shook himself. Why should the color of her hair matter? She was a sorceress.

"You would judge me then, before ever you knew me, based on the actions of one misguided woman?" The lady sat down on one of the great granite boulders encircling the pool in the center of the clearing. Still not facing Gwaine, she smoothed the skirts of her forest-green dress and stared resolutely out across the water, to somewhere or sometime very far away.

"It was a High Priestess who destroyed my kingdom, murdered my king, slaughtered my friends, and brought me to the brink of death," Gwaine spat out through gritted teeth.

"And yet it was a High Priestess who brought you back." Her shoulders straightened, and to Gwaine she seemed as ancient and unyielding as one of the great oak trees that surrounded the grove. "But I cannot raise men from the dead or restore a kingdom to glory, and for that I am sorry."

Gwaine did not reply. He lay still, watching her with caution verging on curiosity. Who was this woman who lived so removed from the kingdoms of men, who spoke as if she belonged to a bygone age?

"You see, Gwaine, I have watched many kingdoms rise and fall. I have watched great men—and great women—grow into their power, meet their destinies, and then fade away like smoke on the wind. And I have watched the not-so-great ones as well…" Her voice grew soft and far-away, as if she was seeing things once again that had come to pass long ago.

"A hundred years ago, as a young High Priestess bursting with promise, I left these lands to study with ancient teachers who could show me magic and power that no human alive in the world then remembered, nor do any now. I traveled to Avalon, to the courts of the Sidhe, and there I found myself welcomed. For the Sidhe were not always as cruel and malicious as they were in Arthur's day…" A ray of fondness entered her voice as she spoke of the creatures Gwaine had heard so many nightmarish tales about. "For a hundred years I dwelt with them, learning their customs, speaking their language, reading their books, practicing their ancient arts… They even allowed me to partake in their elders' councils. Yes, a hundred years passed, in what seemed to me no more than the blink of an eye. I watched from Avalon as family grew old and died, as friends forgot me… But the magic of the Sidhe kept me young, and I had no wish to leave their land for one where day by day, year by year, magic was dying."

A hundred years… Gwaine stared at her with what might have been the beginnings of pity, had he not resolved to hate her.

"I watched through the water," she continued, still staring out across the mirror-flat pool as the sun sank below the horizon and darkness descended. "I saw the reign of Uther Pendragon, the murder of my last remaining kin, the wanton destruction of our ways… I saw his son, Arthur, and I thought perhaps the young prince was different… But then I saw Morgana's descent into evil and her dark rise to power, and I knew the time was past due for me to return."

The sun had set completely by now, casting the clearing into shadow. The crescent moon hung suspended overhead, as if it was watching over the lady and the knight below, and the first stars of evening were reflected in the still pool. Everything out here was so crisp, so clear. There was no smoke, no torchlight, no castle walls blocking the view of the inky night sky. It was beautiful, Gwaine had to admit, though he had never really been one to appreciate nature.

"I was too late though," the strange woman said, her story coming to an end. "I had tarried too long in the courts of the Sidhe, and none now knew who I was. Magic was outlawed—I could not challenge Morgana in front of the king or his knights without being sentenced to death myself. I watched from the shadows, waiting for my time to strike, but it never came… Was I a coward? Maybe. I was alone, I had not set foot in this country for a century, I knew of my enemy only what I had seen in the water… Am I a coward, Gwaine?"

Why was it that Gwaine could no longer find the hatred and loathing for the woman that had so recently plagued him? Why could he now feel only sorrow and a hint of compassion? Damn it, he _wanted_ to hate her, he _wanted_ to say that she was a coward, but…

"Am _I_ a coward then, lady?" he countered. "Your failings don't seem so different from mine." He thought of Agravaine, of Morgana, of Mordred, of Eira, of all those whose treachery he had been too late to see and too weak to stop.

"Would I have rescued a coward?" she shot back. It seemed that she would not give him a straight answer to every question he asked. Good. If she had been too forthcoming in information, he would have trusted her even less that he already did. And given that she was a sorceress and she had yet to tell him exactly why he was here and not in Camelot, his trust in her was miniscule at best. Or perhaps she simply didn't want to call him a coward…

"Do you have a name I can call you, then?" Gwaine finally asked. "Or do I just address you as 'lady?'"

"It has been so long since I was called by any human name… You know, I have quite forgotten what mine was." She gave her shoulders a little shrug and finally turned back to Gwaine, her movements slow and cautious as if not to startle a wild animal that might flee at any moment.

He saw her eyes then, for the first time he could remember. He had waited with trepidation for her to turn around, certainty gnawing at him that her eyes would be those same pale green orbs, filled with malice and spite, that haunted his nightmares… But while they were undeniably the eyes of a High Priestess, shining with not only the reflected starlight but with the ancient knowledge of centuries, they were not the eyes of Morgana. They were of a flinty grey color which seemed to draw the starlight and hold it there, trapped in her crystalline eyes.

She floated down from the granite boulder—yes, there was no other word to describe her grace but _floated_—with the skirts of her hunter-green dress trailing out behind her and her bare feet stepping soundlessly across the forest floor.

"Call me what you will," she said, standing tall and proud in the moonlight. "It is of no consequence to me."

In that moment, she did not seem human to Gwaine. Morgana, the Disir, all the sorceresses he had ever dealt with before had seemed otherworldly, but more in a deranged or sinister sort of way. This woman was different. She seemed to shimmer with a pale silver light, an almost ethereal light the likes of which he had never seen before.

"Rhiannon," he breathed, the word—the _name_—coming to him out of the darkness. Rhiannon, the old goddess of the moon…

"Rhiannon?" the woman laughed, but it was a kind sort of laugh. "I am no goddess, Gwaine, nor have I any desire to be one. But Rhiannon…" She rolled the name off her tongue, playing with it, testing it. "Rhiannon. I like it. It seems… familiar. I am Rhiannon." She smiled then, and it was a pure smile, not the evil smirk of Morgana.

"I have to get back to Camelot, Rhiannon," Gwaine said. He got his hands under him and was pleased to find that he could lever his body a few inches off of the bracken where he lay.

"You need to rest," Rhiannon replied firmly. "Do you know what happened to you?"

"I was tortured by a High Priestess," he spat, the old anger rising again at the reminder. He was falling under her spell. He couldn't trust her, no matter how beautiful she was in the moonlight.

"_Morgana_," Rhiannon said, stressing the name, "tortured you with a Nathair in attempt to learn King Arthur's whereabouts. She had also captured Percival, who found you just as you passed out. Percival, along with the remaining knights, believe you to be dead."

"All the more reason why I need to get back to Camelot _now_—"

"Hear me out." She held up her graceful hand and motioned for silence. "Morgana found Arthur and Merlin as they made their way towards Avalon, where Merlin believed Arthur could be healed of his wound. Merlin slew Morgana, but even so he was too late. Arthur is dead. Guinevere now rules as High Queen."

"I have to go," Gwaine repeated, struggling to get to his feet. Before the woman now known as Rhiannon could stop him, he swung his legs off the bracken bed and tried to stand. His legs immediately collapsed out from under him as he tumbled to the forest floor at Rhiannon's feet.

"I told you," Rhiannon said with a sigh. "You've been unconscious for four weeks."

She reached down and helped Gwaine maneuver into a sitting position with his back propped up against the makeshift bed. As he reclined against the bracken, gasping for breath and stunned by his own weakness, Rhiannon crouched in front of him so that they stared eye to eye.

"You need to recover your strength before you go anywhere."

"How long?" Gwaine asked through gritted teeth.

"Hard to say. A day or two until you can stand, a few weeks until you can ride, maybe a month until you can run."

"And fight?"

"I don't know. Like I said, you were badly wounded. You might never regain your full strength."

Might never regain his full strength…

Gwaine tipped his head back, feeling the cool moonlight wash over his face. Here he was, stranded in a hidden valley with a powerful sorceress, unable to stand, sword-less, possibly unable to fight again…

"I just need… to get back to Camelot…" he whispered, seeming on the verge of tears.

"Oh, Gwaine… You will find Camelot a very different place from the one you left."

* * *

**Author's Note: I was planning on updating this weekly, but since I had the next chapter finished already... Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 3: An Apple for a Friendship

**3. An Apple for a Friendship**

For the third week in a row, Gwaine woke to the creak of branches in the wind, the rustle of leaves overhead, and the trilling song of a skylark. The only walls were the tree trunks, the only roof their leafy canopy. It was a citadel of a forest in _Cumb Díegol_, just as grand as Camelot in its own special way.

Gwaine stretched and rolled out of the makeshift bed that no longer seemed quite so makeshift. He had almost gotten used to sleeping on the mattress of leafy green ferns—not that he would actually admit that, though. And just because he had gotten used to it didn't mean that he didn't fall asleep thinking of his soft bed inside the great granite walls of Camelot, waking each morning to the smell of something cooking—and occasionally burning—in the kitchens, and then spending each day training or going on patrols with the other knights. He missed Percival and Leon, Arthur and Merlin, Gwen… He missed them so much that it made his heart ache.

But at the same time, it all seemed so distant. It was hard to remember the grandeur of Camelot when he spent his days in one of nature's most ancient strongholds, a valley untouched by men.

This day, as all days, Gwaine woke to find Rhiannon already up and about. There was no other patch of bracken in the clearing, so it had taken Gwaine a couple days to realize that she slept not on the ground, but in the branches of the trees overhead.

He walked stiffly over to the flat-topped boulder overlooking the pool where they usually ate meals. His left side still ached, from his collarbone down to his thigh. Rhiannon had told him that he'd broken several ribs on that side, which accounted for his chest. His shoulder and his thigh, though… He shivered just thinking about it. Apparently the Nathair had focused with special intensity in those two places, worrying at his nerves and pumping poison into the veins there. He couldn't remember it though. He couldn't remember anything about being tortured other than white-hot, searing agony.

"How do you feel?" Rhiannon asked, her customary morning greeting to him. She placed a bowl of steaming porridge in front of him and settled on the boulder with a bowl of her own.

"Ready to return to Camelot," he replied, his customary response. He studied the broth before him with distaste. It was full of strange green herbs that looked as if they belonged locked up in Gaius's chambers, not let loose in his breakfast. Then again, that was how a lot of Rhiannon's cooking looked, and it was yet to be poisonous. _Yet._

Rhiannon had promised to help him return to the castle as soon as he was fit for travel. In Gwaine's mind, that had been the moment his eyes had first opened again. The High Priestess thought he should be able to walk first. After many battles of will, Gwaine had finally given in when Rhiannon threatened to not show him the way back at all if he kept pestering her.

Did Gwaine trust Rhiannon? It was hard to say. She had healed him, brought him back from the brink of death, promised to help him get home… But at the same time, she always spoke as if she did not think he would stay in Camelot for long. She claimed he had lost his sword and cloak in the woods, but sometime whilst he'd been unconscious she had removed his chainmail as well, leaving him with nothing but the dark red tunic he had once worn under his armor, his worn brown pants, and a pair of battered leather boots. When he looked at his reflection, he didn't see a knight anymore, only a wayward traveler.

"Here. Take this too." Rhiannon tossed him an apple and Gwaine caught it deftly in his right hand. He smiled to himself. When he'd first woken up, he hadn't been able to catch something to save his life.

"Thanks," he said, getting ready to bite into the crisp red apple.

"I suggest you save it," Rhiannon replied, slipping another apple into a leather satchel she wore slung over her shoulder.

"Save it?" Gwaine asked, before he could take a bite.

"Are you done with that?" Rhiannon pointed at his nearly-empty bowl of porridge. He hated how she did that, answering his questions with other completely unrelated questions of her own, but he was slowly growing accustomed to it. She always seemed to answer everything eventually.

He took the bowl and washed it out, not in the pool but in a small puddle next to the hollow oak where Rhiannon stored her cooking supplies. Rhiannon rinsed her bowl too and tossed Gwaine his staff from where he had left it propped up against the boulder.

"Come," she said curtly, and began striding off through the trees.

"I— Witches," Gwaine muttered under his breath, pocketing the apple and snatching his staff as he limped off after her. He didn't exactly _need_ the ashwood stave in order to walk, but it definitely helped having something else to support his weight, especially when he was moving quickly. His left leg was still stiff, and sometimes it hurt to put weight on it. Rhiannon said it was a remnant of his ordeal with the Nathair and that it would eventually fade away. Gwaine sincerely hoped it would do so soon, so he could get back to sword practice as Rhiannon had promised he could. Where she would get the swords from remained to be seen, but that wasn't Gwaine's biggest issue at the moment.

He didn't bother to ask where they were going. Rhiannon probably wouldn't have told him anyways. Besides, it was all he could do to keep his attention focused on the ground as he maneuvered his way around trip roots and boulders, large thorny bushes and random dips in the ground. He swatted branches out of his face, but they swung back seconds later and he was hit by more than a few of them.

"This is worse… than the Impenetrable Forest…" he growled, as yet another vine tangled itself around his arm. It was like the trees were alive and sentient, and doing everything they could to impede his progress. Rhiannon, he chafed to see, strolled through the woods without the slightest of problems, stroking a branch here and patting a leaf there as if they were old friends.

"Oh," she laughed, pausing to turn back and stare at Gwaine when he gave a grunt of frustration, having found himself with a vine wrapped around each wrist, one foot smashed against a trunk, and the other stuck under a trip root. "Sorry. _Mín fréawine_," she said, glaring pointedly at the trees as she gestured to Gwaine.

In such a way that Gwaine could have sworn they were ashamed, the vines uncurled from his arms, the trip root grudgingly released his foot, and the tree trunk shifted so that his leg was free to move again. With his feet once again firmly planted on the ground, Gwaine looked up at the trees and shuddered. Before he had only imagined them being alive. Now, though, he had to wonder…

Something furry brushed against his leg, and he bit back a scream. When he glanced down though, it was only a small red fox he saw looking back at him, with its black-tipped ears perked in curiosity and something like amusement dancing in its amber eyes. Gwaine froze, and the fox gave a yip of laughter before disappearing back into the woodland. A moment later, it reappeared trotting next to Rhiannon.

It made Gwaine stop and think for a second.

He was following a sorceress into the woods. Didn't that kind of go against every single one of his instincts? Wasn't this how those stories all began, those stories that always ended with the knight dying some horrible death caused by enchantments? Shouldn't he just run in the opposite direction, and keep running until he was far away from _Cumb Díegol_?

"Come on, Gwaine! They are anxious to meet you!" came Rhiannon's call from around the bend, beyond a hanging curtain of green moss.

_They?_ Who were _they_? More sorceresses? Gwaine glanced over his shoulder. There was nothing blocking his path, he could just start running now… Except for the fact that he hadn't moved much faster than a slow, shuffling jog since he had woken up. He didn't even know if he _could_ run.

A nicker rang out from the clearing up ahead. A nicker… A horse…

A horse.

Gwaine dashed forwards as fast as his feet could carry him and found that he could indeed run, a few steps at least. He crashed into the clearing and saw Rhiannon waiting there for him, the fox at her side, but all his attention was focused on the two animals in front of her.

One horse was contentedly chewing on an apple as Rhiannon scratched the thin white blaze on his forehead. He was a liver chestnut with a rich, dark brown coat and four flashy white socks. As he munched on his snack, he lazily swished his tail at a fly. His long black mane rippled in the breeze as tiny currents of air stirred the multitude of hawk feathers braided there. He was quite clearly an older horse, as evidenced by the sunken skin over his eyes and the freckled grey hairs on his face, but his chestnut brown eyes were intelligent and there was fire in them yet.

It wasn't the liver chestnut that had nickered to him though. That had been the second horse. The tall black pranced forwards, blowing its long forelock out of its eyes with short huffs of breath and picking its hooves up high. It was a younger horse than the one Rhiannon was with, sleek and well-fed, with the muscular build of a knight's destrier and yet still keeping some of the grace and playfulness of a lady's palfrey.

As Gwaine stared, the horse nudged his pocked. Without thinking, Gwaine reached in and pulled out the apple Rhiannon had given him at breakfast. So this was what she'd meant about him needing it later… Once the black had seen it, he couldn't very well put it back. Laughing, Gwaine set the apple on his flattened palm and let the horse take it with a graceful nod of its head.

He expected the horse to go back to Rhiannon after it had taken the treat, but to his surprise it stayed next to him, munching on the apple and nuzzling his shoulder.

"Someone's taken a liking to you," Rhiannon said with a smile. "These two are the last of the horses that used to be bred in this valley. When the Priestesses went into hiding, the horses turned wild. I thought they would all be gone when I returned, but there were these two, waiting to greet me home."

"Does he have a name?" Gwaine asked, stroking the black's silky neck.

"Galahad," Rhiannon replied.

"Galahad…" He smiled and looked at the horse, and that was when something caught his attention. "But he's a _she_!"

"So? Her name can still be Galahad. Call her Gal if it bothers you so much."

But Gal didn't sound right. It sounded to diminutive for such a powerful horse.

"Gala," Gwaine said. "I'll call you Gala. Do you like that?" The black mare nuzzled his shoulder in response, and he took it as a yes. "What do you call him?" he asked, pointing to the old stallion.

"This is King Lot of Orkney and Lothian. Lot, for short." Rhiannon patted him fondly. "I saw many things in the waters of Avalon, all the things that did happen along with all the things that could have. I named these two after people I saw in the water, people whose stories never came to pass in this world."

"And you couldn't have chosen a girl's name for Gala?"

Rhiannon shrugged. "It was men who dictated the stories. The girls were always betrayed, or maltreated, or suppressed. The few who took their destinies in their own hands didn't meet the best of fates. None of their names fit her."

"So who _was_ Gala named for?"

"The purest of all knights. Through the water I saw how—had he come to Camelot— he would have gone on a quest for the Holy Grail and eventually found it. Though it was interesting to watch it unfold, I must say that I'm glad it didn't happen. Or at least, not in that way. You had enough problems with the Cup of Life. As for Galahad, there's something of him in her eyes. And if you're wondering about my Lot, well, he could have been one of the most powerful northern kings, the husband of a sorceress. And, ironically enough, your father in many of the stories that might have happened."

His father, the king of the north, and his mother, a sorceress… Gwaine shuddered. He was glad that some of Rhiannon's possibilities at least never became reality.

Gala nuzzled his shoulder and lipped his tunic, staring at him pitifully with her dark brown eyes.

"Sorry girl, no more!" Gwaine raised his empty hands in surrender and Gala's ears twitched backwards in disappointment.

As Gwaine stroked Gala's glossy neck, admiring her compact muscles and elegant form, he saw Lot prance up to Rhiannon out of the corner of his eye. The greying stallion frolicked like a colt, picking his hooves up high and arching his neck so that the wavy black mane cascaded like a waterfall. He nudged the woman in the chest and she scratched his forehead, laughing as she did so. After wiggling his lip in delight, Lot turned so that Rhiannon was standing next to his withers and craned his neck around to give her a quizzical look.

Rhiannon grasped a chunk of mane in one hand, balancing her palms on his withers, and vaulted onto the stallion's back in one smooth motion. She settled herself, arranging the skirts so that they weren't wrapped uncomfortably around her legs, and glanced back at Gwaine.

Gwaine took one look at Gala and knew that he didn't yet have the strength to spring onto her back. She was far too tall, and his arms trembled enough with the effort of carrying stones in attempt to recondition his muscles. In vain, he cast his eyes around for a rock or a stump he could use as a mounting block, but there was nothing. He shook his head reluctantly and backed away from the mare.

Trotting a circle around the clearing, Lot's dark mane and tail streamed out behind him. He nickered and tossed his head impatiently, Rhiannon muttering to him as she tried to calm him.

The black mare glanced once at Lot, then turned to look at Gwaine. She bowed her forelegs and began to lower herself to the ground as she knelt in the grass.

She was inviting him to ride.

Gwaine hesitantly swung one leg over her back, then grabbed for her mane as she lurched back to her hooves. Once she was standing, Gala glanced around and nudged Gwaine's foot with her nose.

"Hey," Gwaine said, patting her shoulder. "Thanks. It's been a while since I've ridden bareback, so—"

But Gala didn't wait for him to finish whatever he was going to say. She perked her ears forwards and pawed the ground once, giving Gwaine just enough warning to steady his seat and tighten his grip with his calves, then the black mare sprang into a canter.

"Gala!" he yelled, trying to turn her back towards the clearing and Rhiannon as she surged down the narrow path. "Galahad!"

"You'll be fine!" Rhiannon called, trotting her liver chestnut stallion a few strides along the trail. "Trust her!"

_Trust her._ Maybe it wasn't as hard to trust the big black mare as it was to trust Rhiannon. Gala's hooves dug into the ground, sending up a fine spray of dirt as she cantered surefootedly through the forest. Trees flashed by on either side of Gwaine as he hung grimly on, ducking under low-hanging branches and keeping his eyes peeled for any sudden gullies.

Eventually, after the first mad dash, Gala settled into a rocking gait smoother than that of any horse Gwaine had ever ridden before. He began to relax as the noontime sun pierced the canopy of the woodlands, dappling the leaves with patches of light and shadow as the songbirds chirped in greeting. Gala's hooves beat tirelessly against the dead leaves and the rich loam covering the forest floor, and as they rode deeper into _Cumb Díegol_, Gwaine felt his heart lift for the first time in weeks.

Now that he was riding again, he was finally starting to feel like his old self. He would be a knight once more. And maybe, with a little help from Gala, he would be able to make it back to Camelot.

* * *

**Author's Note: So in case you couldn't tell, I've been a huge fan of Arthurian legend since before I started watching Merlin. I thought it would be fun to see how many of the stories that didn't make it into Merlin I could incorporate into this... Not all of them will be as obvious as these ones! Thanks for reading! (Oh, and bonus points for anyone who got the Gwapple reference!)**


	5. Chapter 4: Forging a Legend

**4. Forging a Legend**

"Are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" Gwaine queried, glancing up from brushing Gala. The black mare nickered and nudged his arm, clearly wondering why Gwaine had stopped grooming her.

"Run to that tree there," Rhiannon said, pointing to an old, lightning-struck oak. There was a jagged scar from the long-ago bolt of energy running down the trunk, splitting it open in a narrow cleft that started about ten feet up the tree and continued up into the lower branches. "Bring back what's in the hollow."

Perhaps it was a sign of his growing trust in her that Gwaine did not question Rhiannon's instructions. It had been a week since she had introduced him to Lot and Gala, and in that time Gwaine had come to develop a sense of respect for her. If the horses were as devoted to her as they were, they must be able to detect something worthwhile about her, and Gwaine was certain that Gala was not the kind of horse to place her trust in the wrong person.

Gwaine gave Gala a pat and jogged over to the tree. He wasn't as fast as he had been before—well, just _before_—but he could run at a fairly decent pace without being overtaken by pain or exhaustion. When he reached the oak, he looked for a way to climb it. The bark was gnarled and weathered by hundreds of years of exposure to the wind and water, and it would have taken five people standing hand in hand to encircle the monolithic trunk.

How was he supposed to climb it? There were no branches he could use—the lowest branches were _above_ the cleft he was trying to get to. He ran a hand over the bark and while it was gnarled, it was by no means pitted and grooved enough that he could use the ridges as handholds.

He glanced back towards Rhiannon, and she gave him a slight nod. He hadn't been asking for her permission, but her nod reminded him of his experience with the sentient trees growing in the valley.

"Do you mind?" he whispered to the tree, feeling slightly foolish. Well, better to sound foolish now than to end up with an angry oak tree later.

The tree, as predicted, said nothing in response, nor did it miraculously lower any boughs for Gwaine. Then again, neither did it bowl him over with its roots, which Gwaine took to be a good sign. Maybe the tree was indifferent. Or maybe he had just been spending too much time with Rhiannon and it really was only a tree.

That still left the question of how he was going to climb it.

Gala walked over to Gwaine while he was pondering his predicament and nudged his shoulder.

"Not now, Gala," he said, trying to shove the black mare away. But she stayed rooted at his side, her dark brown eyes glancing at him, then the tree, then back to him. "Horses don't climb trees. Now let me think—Oh."

Gwaine turned to look at Gala. She was taller than Rhiannon's stallion, and her withers came to a little above Gwaine's shoulders. Next, he turned and looked at the tree. To reach the bottom of the gap in the trunk, he would have to be about twice the height he was now.

Gala whuffled in amusement, and Gwaine had to wonder if all the Priestesses' horses had been this intelligent. The black mare knelt on her forelegs and Gwaine swung his leg over her back. Carefully, she rose back to her hooves and stood perfectly still next to the tree, as frozen as if she was a statue.

Taking a deep breath, for he had never done this before, Gwaine swung his legs behind him so that his feet were resting flat on Gala's back. As he pushed down on her withers for support, he slowly rose into a kneeling position. The tree was right next to him, close enough to reach out and touch for support.

Slowly, Gwaine moved his bare feet forward one at a time so that he was crouched on her back with his feet directly under him, waiting for a spurt of courage to come and help him stand.

He found his courage in the kindly gleam of Gala's eyes as she bent her head around to watch him.

With more caution than he had ever used in his life, Gwaine began to rise. He felt the soft, warm skin of the mare under his feet, and it did not move. She was as solid as a boulder with a back as broad as a tree trunk. Gwaine's balance had improved considerably from the staggering wreck he'd been when he had first woken up, but he still found his hand inching towards the tree to guide his slow progress up.

Finally, many shuddering breaths later, he found himself standing upright on the mare's back with one hand flung out into the air for balance and the other resting just below the gap in the tree trunk.

Gala snorted in mild impatience, and Gwaine quickly reached into the crevice. His fingers touched something stiff and leather, something that belonged to another life than his one in Rhiannon's ancient valley.

A scabbard.

His caution slowly fading away to be replaced by curiosity, Gwaine drew the scabbard and the sword it held from its concealed crevice. He swung the buckled sword belt over his shoulder and crouched down over Gala's withers, then slowly stretched his feet out behind him one leg at a time until he could swing his legs forward and sit firmly on her back once again.

"Ingenuity, resourcefulness, cooperation with others," Rhiannon counted the qualities off on her fingers and smiled as she watched Gwaine dismount. "I think I chose well."

"Chose well for what?" Gwaine asked, though now that he had his feet on solid ground once again he was more interested in the sword he had pulled out of the tree. The scabbard was made of plain brown leather, unadorned except for the lacing where the leather had been dyed green. The design of the sword itself was simple: circular pommel, hilt wrapped in black leather, straight crossguard. He pulled the blade a couple inches out of the scabbard, studying the groove of the fuller and the keen edge. It was clearly well made, but other than that there was really nothing spectacular about it at all.

Rhiannon's smile grew small and mysterious. "This land needs a new legend."

"I'm not a legend—" Gwaine started to protest, but at that moment the afternoon sunlight came streaming through the trees and caught on the exposed part of the blade.

Perhaps it was the leaves the light passed through or perhaps it was something in the metal of the sword itself, but the blade gleamed green.

"True, you are not a legend yet," Rhiannon said. "But that sword you hold in your hands was once called Grenebrand, because the blade flashed green when it was first made. I know, for I was there a hundred years ago, standing under the light of a full Midsummer moon and watching as it was forged from the metal of a fallen star. We all waited to see who would be chosen to wield it when the night was through, but when each one of us touched it the green light died. For me, though, the light flickered for a few seconds before it vanished. Thus I was appointed guardian, but not wielder, of Grenebrand."

Gwaine glanced down at the sword again. Forged from the metal of a fallen star… Green shadows danced across the blade, a constant and ever-changing stream of patterns that came and vanished like smoke. It was mesmerizing…

"When I left for Avalon, I placed Grenebrand in the trunk of the tree next to which it had been forged, and there it waited for many long years, preserved by my skills until the one who could make the green fire dance along the blade once again appeared to claim it." Rhiannon took in the sight of Gwaine holding the green-tinged sword and nodded. "Either the sword will make you a legend, or you will make the sword a legend. Time will tell."

_Grenebrand_… The word whispered through Gwaine's mind like an incantation. Under Rhiannon's watchful eye, he drew the blade completely from the scabbard for the first time. It was light and solid in his hand, a little longer than the broadsword he was familiar with but nothing he wouldn't grow accustomed to with practice. The green light rippled the full length of the blade, not really a fire but more of a glimmer to the steel.

"Thank you," Gwaine said, sheathing the blade before he became too entranced in its glimmering patterns.

"It is you I have to thank," countered Rhiannon. "The guardianship of Grenebrand is now a burden I no longer have to bear, and I think the blade will serve you well."

Gwaine belted the strange sword around his waist and it hung by his side, as natural as if it had always been there. He had a horse, he had a sword… He would be a knight once again. In his mind's eye, he saw the towering white walls of Camelot gleaming strong and proud in the afternoon light. The turrets soared skyward like great trees of stone and the crenellated walls were guarded by a multitude of soldiers in Pendragon red and gold. Arthur's banner fluttered in the breeze as the clash of metal on metal rang out from the practice fields where knights trained, and the city bustled—

But that was Camelot in memory.

What was the once-lively castle like now? Its king was dead, many of its knights slaughtered or scattered… Gwaine doubted that the same force of soldiers he had once known still manned Camelot's walls. Gwen ruled as High Queen under the Pendragon banner now. She would welcome him back, but how many faces would be missing from the halls? How many comrades would never set foot in Camelot again?

"Percival," Gwaine said suddenly. "Leon. Where are they?"

"In Camelot," Rhiannon answered him curtly.

"That's where I should be." Gwaine let out a low whistle and Gala trotted up to his side. She could take him back to Camelot… "I can run, I can ride, I can fight—"

Rhiannon held up a hand to halt his petition. "I know. We leave tomorrow."

Gwaine had not expected it to be that easy, and something about his expression must have shown it.

"Legends are not made in the secret valleys of the wild where humans dare not venture," Rhiannon said, a cunning spark in her eyes. "They are made out there, where they are forged by the hammer of courage and the anvil of circumstance, tempered in the slipstreams of time, and honed by the whetstones of storytellers. You must return to Camelot."

* * *

The midnight bell tolled out into the darkness that lay like a shroud over Camelot. Spring was fading into summer, and the scent of flowers was sweet on the warm breeze as it drifted over the citadel, its currents eddying around the battlements before flowing on into the night.

Yet the scent of flowers came not from the fields where the green grass swayed gently in the starlight, but from the dark mounds of earth where those fallen at Camlann would rest for eternity.

And so it was that the scent of flowers brought no joy to the two men standing guard, for they had placed many of the flowers on their friends' graves themselves.

"Do you ever get the feeling that he's still out there somewhere?" mused the curly-haired knight as he leaned over the battlements. "I mean, that any day he'll come riding through those gates, asking why we didn't look for him, or we'll walk into the tavern and he'll be there waiting for us?"

His tall companion was silent as he stared off into the night.

"Perce?" Leon pressed, putting a hand on his friend's arm.

"No," Percival answered. "He's dead."

But as Leon sighed and turned away, he didn't see the single tear tracing its way down Percival's cheek.

* * *

**Author's Note: Sorry it's been a while since I've updated this! Blame midterms... Thanks for reading!**


	6. Chapter 5: An Empty Grave

**5. An Empty Grave**

The sun was rising over _Cumb Díegol_ bathing the tops of the trees in vibrant hues of orange and gold as the trilling of skylarks filled the air. Peace prevailed, a cloak of stillness that had lasted for a hundred years and would last for a hundred more, for the valley was a place out of time.

As the new day dawned, two riders made their way out of the valley. Their path was steep, rising out of the valley with twists and turns and littered with fallen boulders. The horses' coats, one black and one dark chestnut glistened, with sweat as they dug their hooves into the stony trail and made their way steadily upwards. Behind the riders trotted a red fox, who seemed to be having a much easier time of the ascent as he playfully leapt from boulder to boulder.

"I could walk, you know," Gwaine said, guilt stirring in his heart as he saw how Gala strained up the cliff path.

"And then we would have to camp here overnight, because it would take you a day just to get to the top," Rhiannon retorted. She had dismounted a few minutes ago and was now trudging along next to her liver chestnut stallion.

Gwaine reluctantly admitted that she was right. He wasn't strong enough to make it up the treacherous valley walls on his own, at least not without stopping to rest every fifteen minutes. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

Gala snorted and nuzzled his foot, which Gwaine assumed was her way of telling him that she was fine with the current situation. He was still riding bareback, since Rhiannon evidently had no saddles for the horses—or bridles, for that matter—so he supposed Gala wasn't carrying as much weight as she could have been. And Gwaine only had his sword and a small knapsack of food…

"I'll make it up to you anyways," he whispered, patting her shoulder. "Lots of apples."

The black mare bobbed her head, and Gwaine had to smile. His mood never stayed dark for long when he was around the lively, intelligent horse.

"Medraut!" Rhiannon barked suddenly, making Gwaine jump. He looked around, but he couldn't find anyone else she could possibly be yelling at. It was only the two of them, the horses, and the fox.

The fox.

The bushy-tailed red fox that was prancing jauntily along the edge of the trail, where the sheer cliff walls plummeted down to the valley floor a hundred feet below.

At Rhiannon's shout, he pulled up short and paused with one inky black paw raised and his white-tipped tail flicking back and forth. He cocked his ears in her direction and twitched his nose disdainfully.

Rhiannon sighed angrily and paced over to the stone the fox had been about to step on. She gave it a slight tap with her finger, and all of a sudden it tipped over the edge of the cliff and tumbled down into the valley, shattering as it bounced off the wall on its way down. She glared at the fox and marched pointedly back to Lot's side. For his part, the fox lowered his tail, jumped off the rocks, and fell into step behind Rhiannon and the stallion.

"You called him Medraut," Gwaine said a few seconds later, after the scene had processed itself in his mind and he had nudged Gala a couple steps closer to the cliff wall, away from the treacherous edge.

"So I did," Rhiannon replied, keeping her eyes fixed on the path ahead.

"What story is that from?" The name sounded almost familiar to him, like something he should know but had forgotten.

"One I wish I could have changed." Rhiannon fell silent after that and would not say more, and so they continued out of the valley with the only sounds being the chirp of the birds and the clatter of hoof on stone.

It was nearing noon when they reached the rim of the valley. Gala and Lot heaved themselves gratefully onto level ground again, breathing heavily as Gwaine dismounted and Rhiannon scouted ahead. Still silent, Rhiannon led the company to a small grove of trees bordering the valley, through which ran a swift-flowing brook that cascaded over the cliff in a tumbling waterfall. As Gala drank from the stream, Gwaine gently picked the stones out of her hooves while Rhiannon did the same for Lot. Medraut was curled up on a bed of ferns with his tail wrapped tightly around his body, giving him the appearance of a large, furry fungus.

"We rest here and continue on in the morning," Rhiannon said stiffly, dropping her pack by the stream and taking out a few apples for lunch. Gwaine took his share, although he gave Gala extra as he had promised, and mulled over the sharp change that had descended over Rhiannon ever since the name Medraut had been spoken. Her eyes seemed so very far away, like they were gazing into another time and another place…

* * *

Gwaine fell asleep as the sun sank below the horizon, but he woke some hours later. The full moon was sailing high overhead through an inky black sky splattered with stars, and all was silent except for the small sounds of branches creaking and rustling in the wind. Gwaine assumed it was such a noise that had awoken him, and he rolled back over onto his side in attempt to fall back asleep.

That was when he saw her.

Moonlight danced and shimmered in her long hair, turning the bronze to silver. It played across the pale skin of her arms and hugged her graceful neck, flowing over her shining green dress and pooling at her bare feet. She was like a statue, a statue carved of moonbeams that stood sentinel over the ancient valley.

She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, gazing out over the valley that stretched below her. Rugged cliffs and trees as old as time itself, a secret haven unspoiled by men… _Cumb_ _Díegol _was bathed in starlight, glancing off the tops of the trees and reflected in the tumbling waterfalls.

It was beautiful—not in the way that the arches and spires of Camelot were beautiful, but with the simple, raw beauty of nature.

And Gwaine found, oddly enough, that he was sad to be leaving it.

Rhiannon stood in the moonlight, as still as if she was frozen. She gazed out over the valley, her back tall and unbent as a sturdy pine, her moonlit hair fluttering slightly in the breeze. She looked out of place, out of time, like something that belonged to an older world than this one. She was the last guardian of _Cumb Díegol._

And suddenly Gwaine realized that by coming with him, she was forsaking that guard.

* * *

They travelled on for many days, and not once did Gwaine see Rhiannon look back towards the hidden valley. She informed him in her brusque way that it was seven days' ride from her realm to Camelot, but when he asked how she had managed to make such a long trip with him injured and unconscious, she merely shook her head.

"It wasn't seven days then," she said. Gwaine felt his skin tingle at the word hanging unspoken in the air between them—_magic_—and let the subject drop. He still wasn't quite sure how he should feel about Rhiannon's powers. Grateful, for sure—they had saved his life, after all—but wary above all else. The image of Morgana, cloaked in power as black as her heart as she opened the little wooden box with the Nathair, had yet to leave Gwaine's mind.

At first, the landscape they passed through was full of unfamiliar forests and strange mountains that rose in the distance, path-less lands where they saw not another living soul and the wind moaned cold and lonely across the plains. But slowly, ever so slowly, memories began to filter back to Gwaine.

He and Percival had turned back from a scouting mission at that boulder there. Leon had led them through that grove of trees on their way back to Camelot after rooting out a pack of bandits. There were wildren in that cave. The swaying grass and forest loam turned into a thin dirt track beneath their horses' hooves, and Gwaine knew that he was truly on his way home.

"This was once the border of Camelot," Rhiannon said, pointing to a large, weathered boulder sitting next to the road.

"Once?" Gwaine asked, studying the rock. He couldn't place it, but he knew he must have passed it countless times.

"You don't honestly expect that a kingdom with only a handful of knights can hold on to all its territory, do you?" Without waiting for his answer, Rhiannon urged her stallion into a canter. "These are Odin's lands now," she called over her shoulder as Gwaine raced to catch up with her.

Odin's lands… Gwaine had a sinking feeling in his heart that Rhiannon had been right when she told him that Camelot had changed. If Odin now owned all these lands, all these miles of open fields, Camelot must have shrunken to half its former size.

They did not slow their pace until Rhiannon informed Gwaine that they had reached Camelot's new border. The whole company was somber as they trotted along the ill-kempt road, frequently having to go out of their way to avoid fallen trees and flooded streams that never would have hindered travelers in Arthur's time when patrols kept the roads clear. How much things had changed since Camlann.

When they were a few hours journey from Camelot, Rhiannon and Lot came to an unexpected halt next to an old, gnarled apple tree. It stood a few feet away from the rest of the trees in the forest, probably the product of some long-ago traveler's discarded apple core. Gwaine remembered it distinctly, having often passed it on his forays through the kingdom, but he did not remember the freshly turned earth and cut flowers at its roots.

Nor did he remember the gravestone.

"What is that?" he whispered hoarsely as Gala came to a halt beside Lot. Some sixth sense prickled at the back of his neck when he looked at the simple gravestone, standing so proud and lonely at the base of the apple tree.

"That is your grave," Rhiannon replied, gesturing to the stone.

Finally, Gwaine made out the letters carved there: _Gwaine. Knight of Camelot. Loyal Friend._

His grave.

His _grave._

The sight of that freshly turned earth and those white daisies withering on top of it finally hammered home to Gwaine that he should have been dead. That his friends thought he was dead. That they had mourned for him and buried him. It left him with an odd feeling of numbness in his heart.

"It's empty, of course," Rhiannon said. "Just your cloak and your sword, which they must have found in the forest. Gwen and Leon wanted to give you the same send-off they gave Lancelot when they couldn't find his body, but Percival said there would be no funeral pyre for you. He and Leon buried your things together about two months ago."

Rhiannon and Lot moved off, still shadowed in the forest by the red fox, but Gwaine lingered by the apple tree for a moment longer. He could always find another cloak in Camelot, and he didn't need another sword now that he had Grenebrand, but there was something eerie that came with knowing they were buried in a grave with a headstone meant for him. A part of his life was buried, gone forever.

"Let's go, Gala," he whispered, and the mare turned her head towards Camelot once again. She trotted a stretch to catch up with Rhiannon and Lot, and Gwaine, remembering Rhiannon leaving _Cumb_ _Díegol,_ did not look back at the road behind him.

And so it was that he did not see the clouds roll away and a solitary ray of sunlight glance down on the apple tree's ancient limbs, making the daisies glow golden as they rested on an empty grave.

* * *

**Author's Note: Well, I wasn't planning on updating until later this week, but after the National Television Awards today... Congratulations, Colin Morgan!**


	7. Chapter 6: In the Tavern

**6. In the Tavern**

The sun was just dipping below the horizon as Gwaine and Rhiannon approached the gates of Camelot. Gwaine felt strange, riding up to the gateway he knew so well in such an odd manner. He rode bareback, no saddle and no bridle, with Grenebrand swinging from its scabbard at his hip and the evening breeze stirring his ripped and stained old tunic, rustling the folds of the dark green cloak Rhiannon had lent him. He was disheveled and scraggly, hadn't had a proper bath or access to a brush in months, and was still limping slightly. In other words, he had regressed from well-kept knight to ragged outlaw again.

The gates were closing for the night as the cloaked pair clattered into the citadel. The guards on duty were strangers who barely gave Gwaine a passing glance as he rode through. He hadn't expected to be recognized immediately, but there was something about riding back into Camelot and the soldiers in red and gold just standing there and watching him with blank eyes that made his heart sink.

Camelot didn't know him anymore.

Rhiannon pulled Lot back so that she trailed behind Gwaine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her gaze darting from side to side under the shadow of her hood. She was tense as a strung bow, charged as the air before a lightning strike, but she was clearly trying her best not to show it. Lot's nostrils flared, but other than that he gave no sign of unease. Gala's skin shivered under Gwaine's hand, and he suddenly realized that neither the horses nor Rhiannon had been to Camelot before. They were in _his_ world now.

Only, it wasn't really his anymore.

"Where are we going?" Gwaine asked out of the side of his mouth. The people on the street were starting to give him odd looks, looks that made him uncomfortably aware of the longsword he carried. They were looking at him like he was some kind of threat, someone not to be trusted, dropping their gaze as soon as they caught him staring in their direction…

"Wherever you need to go." Rhiannon's voice was terse and clipped, clearly uneasy within the stone walls of the citadel. She was a creature of the forest, uprooted and brought to this city of men and metal…

"The tavern." Gwaine nudged Gala towards The Rising Sun, seeking out the familiar blue sign and yellow sun as the city descended into shadow and night fell. He found the building easily enough, though it seemed darker and emptier than he remembered it.

Rhiannon was silent as she slipped from Lot's back, glancing around warily as if enemies hid in every shadow. "_Diernath,_" she whispered, placing one hand on Lot's muzzle and the other on Gala's. Stallion and mare snorted once before turning around and disappearing into the darkness with a flick of their tails. Medraut, the red fox, had already vanished.

"They will hide themselves within the city until we have need of them," she explained, wrapping her hunter green cloak tight around her shoulders and stepping under the eaves of the tavern.

"You don't have to come with me," Gwaine said gently, remembering her ancient magic and fondness of the wild and knowing how out of place she would be here. "You've done enough for me already, saving my life and helping me get back. Go back to _Cumb_ _Díegol._"

"You still don't understand, do you?" Rhiannon sighed and stepped closer to Gwaine, so that she was only a breath away from him in the darkness. "I am the last of the High Priestesses. My task is to protect this land. You are the last person who can help me do that."

"Why me?"

Rhiannon's only answer was to jerk open the tavern door and shove him inside.

The Rising Sun was filled with the murmur of low voices as Gwaine stumbled back into his old haunt, the torches burned low and a haze of smoke hanging over the inside of the building. Most of the tables were full, but Gwaine could see no dice games, no drinking competitions, no friendly laughter… A sense of doom and decline pervaded the stale air.

Gwaine nudged Rhiannon and made his way towards an empty table at the back of the tavern. She settled down opposite from him, perched on her chair and ready to take flight at any moment.

"Relax," he whispered, although something about the atmosphere of the tavern was making his skin crawl as well. Unconsciously, he pulled the hood of his own cloak down over his eyes.

"W-what can I get you?" the young serving girl asked as she approached their table. Gwaine wondered what had set her so on edge when he caught her looking at Grenebrand, still hanging at his hip with the pommel gleaming dully in the torchlight.

"Tankard of ale," he said, shoving the sword under the table and smiling to reassure her, though later he realized that she probably couldn't see it under his hood.

"Just barley water," Rhiannon said, dropping her voice to a low mutter.

Their orders taken, the girl scurried away to return a minute later with two tankards and run away again. Never before had the servers at The Rising Sun seemed so nervous, or so young, or so skinny and dressed in such threadbare clothing.

"Hope the ale is still good," Gwaine commented, raising the tankard to his lips. He'd been living on spring water for the last two months. To tell the truth, he hadn't thought he could go that long without a visit to the tavern.

"When will you go to the queen?" Rhiannon sipped at her barley water and let her eyes drift across the dim room.

"Later tonight. I want to look for some friends first." Leon and Percival used to spend their evenings at The Rising Sun with him. Surely they would be here now…

And there they were, only two tables away. Percival was still and silent as per usual, but Leon was chatting with a younger knight. Gwaine was about to stand up and walk over, sit down at the table, throw back the hood of his cloak, watch the look on their faces when they beheld him returned from the dead…

But then he noticed that his old place was occupied by a young, fair-haired soldier. The stranger leaned in close to Percival and Leon, whispering something under his breath, and Gwaine's two friends listened intently. They looked so easy together, so natural… It was as if Gwaine had been cut out of the picture and replaced by the fair-haired knight who had grown to fill his place.

"His name is Lucan," Rhiannon said, nodding at Percival and Leon's companion. "One of the new soldiers recruited after Camlann."

"How do you know that?" Gwaine hissed, hurt by how quickly this young boy had taken his place. "You've never been to Camelot."

"True, but I have seen it in the water. _Heorcne rídend,_" she whispered, flicking her hand in the knights' direction with a deft gesture.

Gwaine bristled at the use of magic and started to reprimand her for enchanting his friends, but then he heard the soft murmur of their words and Rhiannon winked slyly at him from across the table.

"Listening spell," she murmured. "Now shut up and listen."

"…have crossed the eastern border," the young knight, Lucan, was saying. From his clipped, businesslike tone, Gwaine identified a rapport in the process. But a rapport of what? He took Rhiannon's advice and stayed silent as he tuned in on the conversation.

"How many strong?" That was Leon, tapping his fingers nervously on the table as he listened intently to Lucan.

"Bedivere and I counted six hundred, but we dared not get closer than the ridge overlooking their camp. They could have more reinforcements on the way."

Bedivere. Another unfamiliar name. Perhaps a knight recruited after Camlann, like Lucan?

Leon sighed and clapped Percival on the shoulder. "What we wouldn't give for a few more knights, eh, Perce? To stem this Saxon tide."

"Knights wouldn't help," Percival said, staring dismally into his tankard. "They'd only get slaughtered."

"You don't know that—" Lucan started to protest, but he cut himself off when his voice rose above a whisper and paused until he had his emotions under control again. "I mean, we can do something. We _have_ to do something. The Saxons will overrun us if we just sit here."

Saxons? Saxons invading Camelot's borders? Gwaine started to say something to Rhiannon, that he thought the Saxons had been defeated with Morgana at Camlann, but the priestess shook her head and indicated that he should keep listening.

"Look, Lucan, we don't have enough knights left to challenge Hengist and Horsa." Leon sounded dejected, defeated. This wasn't the same Leon that Gwaine had once known. "Maybe we still wouldn't have enough, even without the losses at Camlann. The Saxons are too strong, and now we're fighting a defensive war. I didn't want to tell you before the queen did, but we've ordered all the peasants east of the Forest of Ascetir and south of the Mountains of Isgaard to burn their crops and evacuate. They'll start trickling into Camelot before the month is out, along with other refugees as the Saxons advance."

"So we've given up. We're preparing for a siege we have no hope of ending."

"We have _not_ given up. We'll go on fighting until the end, just as Arthur would have done," Leon said firmly, though he didn't sound as if there was much hope of holding out for long.

"What we need now are magic and outlaws," muttered Percival, taking a swig of ale.

"Yes, excellent, more things we could worry about," Lucan snorted.

"No," Percival explained. "Magic to use against Saxon sorcerers, outlaws to sabotage their supplies."

"You would have a point, Perce, but all the magic users in the kingdom are either dead or in league with the outlaws, who only care enough about staying alive themselves." Leon sighed again.

"So we're doomed," Lucan concluded glumly.

"_Ályne,_" Rhiannon whispered, and the knights' voice quieted back into the soft bustle of the tavern. "So," she said, cocking her head to the side and studying Gwaine intently. "Will you go to them? Make your spectacular return from the dead?"

Magic and outlaws…

Percival's words were ringing in his skull, dancing round and round inside his head like leaves blown on the wind…

Rhiannon had magic and he was essentially an outlaw…

Gwaine stood on feet that were surprisingly steady and looked across the room with sight that was surprisingly clear. He put down a few coins on the table to pay for the drinks, and one extra that he hoped the poor serving girl would keep. She would need it in the days to come if all he had heard tonight was correct. Straightening the cloak on his shoulders and pulling the hood down further over his head, he grabbed Rhiannon's hand and pulled her to her feet, a plan beginning to take shape in his mind.

"No. Let's go."

* * *

**Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Sorry it's been so long since I've updated this! It's a sign that I've been being a good writer and actually working on my novel (which I'll never get published if I keep getting trapped on )... But anyways, if I disappear for more than two weeks, you have my permission to message me and remind me that there are other fictional characters who need my attention...**


	8. Chapter 7: A New Mission

**7. A New Mission**

"So," Rhiannon said, the tavern door swinging shut behind her. There was something slightly ominous in the way it slammed, as if Gwaine had closed the door that would take him back to his old life and was now stuck on the other path he had chosen. "I take it we're not spending the night there," she added, disrupting his turbulent thoughts.

"No. I know another inn." He scanned the darkness for a glimpse of the horses, but he heard their unshod hooves clattering on the cobblestones before he saw them. Gala came up to him and nudged his shoulder, staring at him with her liquid brown eyes that knew he needed a comforting touch at the moment. "We need to find them halters, at least. Probably saddles and bridles too," he said, casting his gaze over mare and stallion. He shuddered to think what would happen to the pair if they kept roaming wild around the city. They did not know the ways of men, they would be captured and sold…

Rhiannon pulled two knotted rope halters out from under her cloak and handed one to Gwaine. "I had hoped we would not need them," she explained as Gwaine took it. "I have trained Gala and Lot to tolerate halters, though they do not like them."

True to Rhiannon's words, Gala switched her tail and pinned her ears back when Gwaine approached her with the halter, but she stood still and allowed him to slip it over her muzzle and behind her ears. Next to him, Rhiannon and Lot faced off for a few seconds as the stallion raised his head out of her reach before eventually conceding to lower it and let her put the halter on him.

Gwaine led the way down to the lower city, Gala prancing nervously at his side on the end of her lead line. Behind him, Rhiannon and Lot were no more than shadows, ghosting through the deserted streets without so much as a sound. He glanced back once and felt panic grip his heart when he thought they had disappeared, but then he saw Lot's white blaze shining out of the gloom and breathed a sigh of relief.

Never had Camelot seemed so dark, so menacing… Hardly a torch was lit in the entire lower city, plunging the whole quarter into darkness lit only by the moon and stars overhead. The only people they passed in the streets were solitary guards who stared long and hard into each shadow and jumped at the slightest noise. Houses creaking in the wind suddenly took on a threatening feel, as if something was out there, waiting to attack at any moment…

It was worse than hunting the Dorocha had been all those years ago. At least then the demons of the night had had a name and a weakness, if not a face. Now, though, the terror that had settled over Camelot was a nameless dread, something that could be neither seen nor fought and it was all the more terrifying for that.

"This is it," Gwaine whispered, breathing a grateful sigh when he saw that the old inn was still in business. The windows were barred shut, the paint was peeling, and the lettering on the sign that proclaimed it _The Dragon's Wing_ was nearly illegible, but there was the glimmer of candlelight shining through the cracks of the shutters.

He knocked once on the door and stepped back as a thin man with wispy white hair opened it, holding a lantern in one hand and a dagger in the other.

"Who goes there?" the old man demanded, raising the lantern so that it would have illuminated Gwaine's face, had Gwaine not pulled his hood down even farther at that moment.

"My friend and I are travelers, seeking shelter for the night," Gwaine said, doing his best not to let on that he had once known the aging innkeeper. "Is this not still an inn?"

"Aye, it is," the man said curtly, still keeping the door half-closed.

"Do you have lodging?" Gwaine pressed, showing the innkeeper the coin that Rhiannon had pressed into his hand. He resolved to ask her later just where she had gotten it.

"Take the horses around back," the innkeeper grunted, taking the money and closing the door in their faces.

"It used to be a friendlier place," Gwaine apologized as he and Rhiannon led the horses around the side of the inn to a gated courtyard, where the innkeeper met them and showed them to the ramshackle stable where Gala and Lot were to spend the night. Gwaine did a quick assessment of the other horses in the barn and counted six heavy chargers of the large, stocky breeding favored by mercenaries. Next to the huge drafts, little black Gala looked like a spindly foal.

Once the horses were settled in for the night, the innkeeper led them through the back door of the inn and gave them a key to one of the second floor rooms before pointing them in the direction of the stairs and returning to his post at the empty bar counter. Gwaine and Rhiannon made their way up the creaking stairs and found the room they had been assigned.

"Not much," Rhiannon commented, her bright grey eyes surveying the room and taking in the single bed with its lumpy mattress, the beat-up dresser standing next to it, and the shuttered window across from the door.

"I'll take the floor," Gwaine offered, unclasping his cloak and draping it on top of the dresser. He unbelted Grenebrand, but he did not put the sword aside. In an inn filled with mercenaries, it was probably best to sleep with a weapon close at hand.

"Your side still hurts you," Rhiannon argued as she took of her cloak and laid it next to his. "_I'll _take the floor."

"But—" Gwaine's protest was cut short when Rhiannon shoved him towards the bed and grabbed their cloaks, rolling up one to use for a pillow and spreading out the other for a blanket.

Sensing defeat, Gwaine pulled his boots off and slipped under the blankets with Grenebrand clutched tightly in his hand. The mattress was even lumpier than it looked, if that was possible, but it was graciously free of bedbugs. He thought it would be easy to fall asleep, back in a real bed for the first time in two months, but to his surprise he found that sleep would not come to him and he lay awake as the hours marched slowly by.

"Rhiannon?" he finally whispered, rolling onto his side so that he could see her curled on the floor with his cloak pulled up around her shoulders. She looked so out of place there on the stiff wooden floorboards, away from the ancient trees of _Cumb Díegol_… "Are you awake?"

"Yes," she replied, her eyes flickering open. "Why are you?"

"I can't sleep."

"Evidently."

"It's this building, and these walls, and this bed…" Gwaine sighed. "I can't see the stars or the moon, and I can't hear the leaves rustling in the breeze… Did you put me under a spell?" he accused her, his voice turning sharp as a feeling of unease prickled along his spine.

From her spot on the floor, Rhiannon chuckled softly. "A spell? No more a spell than the one nature lays over all of us. Now that you have seen the wild in all its grandeur, your heart will forever be called to the road. You will never be able to sleep at night unless your roof is the sky and your torch the stars, nor will you be able to feel at home in any citadel built by man. The wild has its mark on you now, and you can never go back to the way you were before."

"Sounds like a spell to me," Gwaine whispered, staring at the dreaded ceiling. Rhiannon's words rang with truth, though. She had not placed a spell on him. He himself had seen the world beyond Camelot and now he longed to be on the road again, ever on the move.

"Do you want to talk about what happened at the tavern?" Rhiannon asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

He didn't particularly want to, but he knew that he should. After all, he would need her help to pull off the plan that had formed in his mind. His thoughts poured out in a flood of words. "Percival and Leon—and that new knight, Lucan—they were talking about the Saxons. I fought against them at Camlann when they were Morgana's allies. They want to take this land for their own, and they care not for the people who already live here. But Percival was right when he said we need magic and outlaws to defeat them, two things Gwen doesn't have. The knights of Camelot, their numbers shrinking every week, can't hold them off for long. They need someone who can get behind Saxon lines, who can sabotage supplies and relay information. Someone who doesn't belong to a kingdom. Someone who isn't afraid of living on the road."

"And you think that someone is you," Rhiannon said—a statement, not a question.

"They think I'm dead," Gwaine breathed, as if saying the words quietly made them easier to bear. "I'm not bound by any rules, I have no tethers to any king or queen. Maybe one dead man can do what an army of knights can't—" He stopped midsentence as stark reality dawned on him.

"_This_ is why you saved me. You _knew_ the Saxons were advancing, you _knew _they were going to need someone like me."

"Yes," Rhiannon whispered into the darkness. "Yes. I knew Albion needed a hero."

"This was your plan all along!" he snapped, furious at how easily he had been manipulated by Rhiannon.

"But you came up with the same plan on your own," she countered. "It was your idea as much as it was mine. All I did was make sure you kept breathing long enough to see what needed to be done."

"And what about you? What's your role in all this?"

"I told you once before. I am the last of the High Priestesses. It is my duty to defend this land, whatever the path, whatever the cost. I am guide and guardian, protector and prophet, who will travel with you wherever the road leads."

* * *

**Author's Note: ...And back to normal updates for the moment. Currently trying to decide on an acceptable balance between romance and adventure for future chapters... Thanks for reading!**

**Sorry about the weird update thing. It decided to be uncooperative.**


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